


Dancing Demons

by TheGodofSmut



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alice Angel lives, Alice gets a redeption arc, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Everyone Is Gay, F/M, Feels, Gay, Gay Sex, Ink Bendy is gay for Henry, Joey Drew is the true villain here, M/M, Polyamory, Romance, Sammy Lawrence Lives, Sammy being a disaster gay, Sammy gets a redemption arc, Sammy gets jealous, Sammy is gay for Henry, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-04 11:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18603709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGodofSmut/pseuds/TheGodofSmut
Summary: After 30 years since he left, Henry has been called down to visit by his old pal Joey Drew. Everything has been aged and forgotten, and Henry can't seem to figure out why he's here. But an evil has been unleashed on this place, and by God, Henry is going to find a way to defeat it.





	1. Moving Pictures

**Author's Note:**

> This thing follows BATIM for a little in terms of plot but then it diverges

Henry steps through the door of the old studio,  _their_  old studio, him and Joey’s. The memories are as old and dusty as the place itself. He looks around, taking in every detail. The walls have faded and are peeling away, revealing the woodwork underneath.

 _'This place is in shambles...'_  He thought.

Henry looks down at the card he received from Joey. He looks back up, determined to know why he's here. "Alright, Joey, I'm here. Let's see if we can find what you wanted me to see..."

As he walks straight ahead, he notices one of the projectors is on, its light flickering on the wall.

_'The projector is on...?'_

He keeps walking, down the corridor to the left, and on the wall there's something written in what looks like ink.

"Dreams come true..." He read aloud, noticing ink dripping from the ceiling. ' _What in the...?'_

Henry continues down the hall, and up ahead is the Ink Machine. He's heard about it, but he's never actually seen it in person until this point.

"So this is the Ink Machine? I wonder how to turn it on," he remarked. He leaves the room the machine is in and searches for its power room. The switch to turn it on must be in there. As he roams the halls for it, he feels the thirty year old nostalgia rush back to him. It's been a long time since he's been here, and he's not sure whether to thank Joey or cuss him out when he's done.

A wooden plank drops down in front of him, making him flinch a little. ' _This place is more rundown than I thought...'_

What really catches Henry off-guard is what was down the hall to the left. From where he's standing, it looks like a body strapped down to a wooden board. As he gets closer, he sees that its rib cage is open, as if someone performed an autopsy on it. The lungs and heart, and possibly some other organs are missing. The most weird detail was that the body wasn't human, and upon closer inspection, it looks like Boris the Wolf.

"Oh my God," he muttered. "Joey, what were you doing?"

He backs away and continues to look for the power room. He finds it after he turns around a corner and sees empty pedestals on either side of the room.

"Now how do I get this to work?" He asked, looking for the on/off switch. He sees a lever, but he knows there must be something to do with those pedestals that could somehow turn it on. He looks above each one, and sees pictures of objects. 

_'Must be what I have to put on the pedestal.'_

Henry leaves to look for the items and flinches again when he turns the corner and finds a cutout of Bendy standing there. He continues, a little unnerved about who could place that there. He should be alone here, right? This place has went out of business and has been abandoned.

Henry scours the halls and rooms for the objects, a tedious task indeed but how else could he turn the Ink Machine on? It's just a bit weird that there has to be some kind of ritual just to turn on a machine.

He stumbles across his old desk and takes a moment to look at it again. He runs his fingertips across the dusty surface and smiles a little. This is where he spent so much time drawing their characters, making them come to life on the big screen.

Henry also stumbles across a cassette tape and plays it, a man's voice speaking. It's one of the old workers, Wally Franks. Henry doesn't know him personally but he would always see him here and there around the studio back when this place had some life.

Finally, after a long time of searching, he has all the objects and puts them on their respective pedestals. He flips the switch and expects the machine should be good to activate now, but it has low pressure.

 _'Really?'_  He asks as he goes to look for wherever the ink flow could be. He flinches for the third time when the Bendy cutout peeks from behind the corner. He looks around for the culprit but is even more confused when no one is there.

_'Well, at least I found the ink flow.'_

He turns on the ink flow switch and heads back to officially turn on the Ink Machine. He flips the lever, the gears inside the machine coming to life. He looks for the Ink Machine itself to see what happens now but a black, inky figure appears from behind some wooden boards blocking the way and ink starts covering the floor.

Henry bolts out of there to the exit, definitely not wanting to see if that thing was friendly. The ink, however, is weakening the wood, and before he could reach the door, the floor gives out underneath him. Henry falls down the hole and lands with a hard thud.

 _'That's gonna leave a mark...'_  He thought as he stood up. He spots an axe hanging on the wall and takes it. He uses it to break down some wooden boards blocking up a hallway. He stumbles upon a small room with some kind of pentagram in the middle. The room (or quite possibly, the whole studio) begins to rumble, and Henry falls to the ground in the middle of the pentagram, dropping his axe.


	2. The Old Song

The ringing in his ears is immense as Henry slowly wakes up. He struggles to get up, his head pounding profusely. He thinks he might have a concussion. Well, if he does, he’ll just have to deal with it later.

“Oh, my head...” He groaned out as he stands up. He sees his axe laying nearby on the floor, next to the pentagram symbol that’s here. He gets an intuition that that was the reason he fell unconscious.

“Gotta keep going,” Henry muttered as he grabs the axe. There’s a door nearby, which must be the exit out, but it’s blocked off by wooden boards, so he swings his axe and breaks the boards down. He turns the doorknob and opens it, and there’s a staircase leading down. It’s dark down there, the only light coming from lit candles, but Henry knows there’s no other option so he pushes forward, ready to face whatever is lurking.

As Henry explores this new part of the studio (he’s honestly never seen it before and can’t remember when the studio got this big), he barely sees another phrase written in ink on the wall through the dim light.

**He will set us free.**

Henry shudders at whoever “He” could be and continues. He finds another cassette tape and plays it, this one being from another worker, Sammy Lawrence. Henry remembers him too as one of the people who worked in the music department. He was the person who wrote the songs. Not too friendly, however, but now that Henry thinks about it, it was probably just his frustration about the work. Everyone seemed to have that when working with Joey, including Henry himself.

He presses on, seeing more pentagram symbols and candles. He stops right before a hallway that has been flooded with ink.

 _’Ew... Well, shouldn’t be_ that _bad...′_ He steps into the ink, the surprising warmth making him shiver more than he would if it was cold. He sees someone at the other side of the hall disappear past the doorway.

“Excuse me! Hello, can you help me?” Henry called out. No response. He hurries through, the ink splashing more. He thought the person would be here, but the direction he was going leads to a dead end. “Where did he go?”

 _‘Nevermind that, then.’_ Henry sees a gate but notices that it can’t be opened yet. So he searches for the switches to power it on. After finding them in the most obscure of places, he pulls the handle to the gate and it opens. He axes down more boards blocking his path and finds himself in the music department.

 _‘Well, I’ve never been in this part of the studio before.’_  He thought as he explored. Henry finds a cassette tape and carries it with him to listen as he wanders. He recognizes who’s speaking on the tape; it’s Susie Campbell, one of the voice actresses for Alice Angel. Henry remembers her a lot, seeing her hanging around Joey Drew plenty of times. He thought of her as being ambitious but obsessed for her role. When the tape stops, he sets it down on a chair nearby and continues.

Henry finds a stairwell but it’s flooded with ink, too much, in fact. He doesn’t think he can walk through there. He sees the power switch on the wall beside him and pulls it, the lights turning on.

_‘Time to figure out how to drain this.’_

Henry hears something coming from behind him and when he turns around to face it, he finds multiple creatures coming for him. They look like they’re made out of ink and resemble something human-shaped. He has no time to think about it right now though, so he uses his axe to kill or subdue them, whichever one works.

As Henry swings his axe into their soft black bodies, bits of ink splash onto him and his clothes. As if he wasn’t already covered in ink from walking through that flooded corridor... He stops when he thinks they’re gone or dead and wipes the ink splatter off his face.

_‘What’s going on in this place...?’_

He keeps going, mainly because he still has to find something that turns on the switch to the drain. As he looks around, he finds another cassette tape by Sammy Lawrence, talking about a pump switch that’s located in his office.

 _‘That must be what turns it on!’_  He thought excitedly.  _‘But where is his office?’_

Henry goes to look for Sammy's office and finds a hallway that wasn't here before. He decides to go through it and after some wandering, finds Sammy's office with the pump switch inside. The entrance was blocked off from the ink flooding the area.

He spots a tape in the corner of his eye on the wall directly across and plays it. It's another one of Wally Frank's, talking about a set of keys for the closet that he lost that may have ended up in a garbage can.

 _'Well, I can start from there.'_  Henry thought as he headed back, checking each waste basket he passed. He finds a set of keys in a waste basket in the room where the band performs. Then he goes back to unlock the closet door.

Henry opens the closet and finds another tape from Sammy inside. It's about his "sanctuary" and he reveals the pattern of musical instruments that must be played to enter it. One or two ink creatures spawn from nowhere so he fights them off. Henry finishes them with a single swing to their bodies and keeps walking to the band's recording room.

He goes upstairs and finds himself overlooking the room where the band performs. There’s a projector sitting up here, so he turns it on, just to see what will happen. He finds a tape sitting next to it and plays it. A man starts to speak and Henry recognizes him as Norman Polk. Norman was the projectionist here, a secluded yet somewhat of a nosy man. Always sneaking around and eavesdropping on the other workers.

Henry watches the projector and it turns off a few minutes later.  _'So it's on a timer.'_  He turns it on again and hurries downstairs. He remembers what Sammy said and plays each instrument in their order. The gate to Sammy's sanctuary opens and inside was the pipe that controls the flow of the ink. Henry cranks the valve wheel and the gushing of ink inside can be heard.

When Henry comes out, he sees a dark figure standing in the projector's room that overlooks this one.  _'Weird, who's that? Are they the guy I saw from before?'_

His questions will have to wait to be answered because more ink creatures have appeared. Henry fights them off victoriously, his axe dripping with black ink and his clothes stained with splatter and drops.

"Time to finally drain that flooded stairwell," he sighed and made his way back to Sammy's office. Just as he expected, the entrance is no longer blocked by ink so he opens the door. Henry flips the pump control switch inside and leaves to find the stairwell.

Henry feels the hard thud of something hit the back of his skull.  _"Agh!"_  He falls to the floor, his vision fading to black. He can vaguely see the figure that he saw from before for just a moment.


	3. Rise of the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The interaction between Henry and Sammy uh, goes a lil different than in the game haha...

Henry feels his cheek being smacked lightly and he slowly opens his eyes. His vision fades in and out as he wakes up.

"Wake up... Wake up, my little sheep..." He hears someone say in front of him. Then he feels them grab his shoulders and violently shake him. "I said  _wake up!_ "

Henry opens his eyes fully and sees the person that he saw before he went unconscious. They look like the ink creatures he's been fighting, but as a full-bodied human. They're also wearing a mask that is Bendy's face and are wearing overalls.

"There we go, now, nice and snug. We wouldn't our little sheep to run away now, would we?" They ask, and the voice sounds  _really_ familiar.

"S...Sammy?" Henry asks, just to see if it's true.

"Hello, my little sheep," Sammy greeted, tracing his warm, inky finger down Henry's cheek in a teardrop motion. "I hope you are well-rested, little sheep, for we have something important to do."

"Sammy, what happened to you?" Henry asked in a breathy whisper, feeling confused and dazed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sammy replied as he tilted Henry's chin up and inspected his appearance.

" _This_ , Sammy! What happened to your body?" He exclaimed.

Sammy evades the question by saying, "You look familiar to me... That pretty face..."

"What the hell are you going on about? My name is Henry-"

"Shh! Not now, uh-... What was your name...?" Sammy asked.

"Henry!" He replied. 

Sammy was about to say something else but stops, then looks at Henry, excitement in his eyes. "Can you hear him, my little sheep? Can you hear him, crawling above?"

Henry does hear something making noise in the vents. But why in the world would that be of any importance?

"The ritual must be completed. I must have him notice me," said Sammy. "And then I will finally be freed from this inky, dark... _abyss_  that is my body."

"You haven't exactly explained  _how_  your body-"

"Quiet now, my little sheep," Sammy coaxes as he cups his warm, gooey hands on Henry's face. "Rest your head, it's time for bed. A kiss good luck, for the journey ahead." He lifts his mask just a bit to plant a kiss on Henry's lips. Henry spits in disgust to get the taste of ink out of his mouth.

"Sammy, where are you going? Sammy!" Henry yelled as he watches him leave. The door shuts and Henry strains to break free from his bondage. 

He hears some sort of speaker turn on and Sammy's voice speaks. "Sheep sheep sheep, it's time for sleep. Rest your head, it's time for bed. In the morning, you may wake. Or in the morning, you'll be dead."

More noises from above can be heard and the gate in front of Henry starts to open. Henry struggles even more.

"Here me Bendy, and claim this offering! Free me from this prison!" Sammy pleads. More noises are heard and Sammy cries out. "M-My Lord, stay back! I am your prophet- aaghh!"

 _'That doesn't sound good...'_  Henry thought as he breaks free from his restraints. He sees his axe and grabs it, then runs through the open gate. He breaks down the wooden boards in the way and makes it through. His axe breaks, however, so he tosses it aside. He sees a flooded hallway straight ahead and attempts to head for it, until a tall, dark figure jumps out and starts to chase him down.

Henry runs from it, being careful not to trip on the wooden planks lying on the floor. He takes one glance back and sees a gross, twisted version of his own character Bendy coming at him full speed.

He makes it through a door that shuts behind him and Henry hears Bendy pound on it for a moment, then silence. Then he hears the sound of a can rolling towards him and clench his fists.

"I know you're there. Come out and show yourself," he said. He hears footsteps and sees Boris come into view.  _"Boris?"_

The wolf nods and beckons him to follow in a 'come here' manner. Henry obeys, staying close behind Boris as he leads him to a secret bunker. Boris locks the door behind him and Henry looks around.

 _'This place is in decent condition, save for the ink that's dripping from the ceiling.'_  He thought.

Boris leads him into what has been turned into a small bedroom of some sort. There's a cot on the floor, a hammock, and a locked chest underneath the hammock. Boris gently pushes Henry to the cot and makes him sit on it.

"Boris, I can't stay here, I have to find a way out," he said and tries to stand up but Boris pushes him down again. He points at Henry, then makes a sleeping gesture.

"You want me...to sleep?" Henry asked. Boris nods and pushes him onto his back. Henry is confused, but a nap would do some good especially for his head, so he doesn't argue about it. Boris leaves and closes the door and Henry shuts his eyes.

Henry wakes up some time later and sits up. He stretches his back and arms and stands. He glances around the room one last time before opening the door and stepping out. He passes a bathroom that he hadn't noticed before and goes inside.

The bathroom mirror is broken, pieces of glass sitting inside the sinks and on the floor. Henry opens one of the bathroom stalls and looks down. The toilet bowl is filled with ink and Henry tries to flush it. The ink doesn't flush, so toilet is probably clogged or something.

 _'Not my problem.'_ Henry thought as he left to continue on his way out of this place. He sees the wolf sitting in a chair at a table, listening to some old music.

He spots the exit here and tries to leave but the lever to open the door is missing.  _'Boris...'_ He turns around to talk to the wolf. "Hey Boris, have you seen a lever somewhere? Or are you keeping it hostage until I make you some food?"

Boris nods at the latter and Henry sighs. "Alright, buddy. let's see what we have."

He rummages around the place and finds some cans of soup. 'This should be good.' He brings them back to the kitchen area and pours the contents into a pot on the stove. Henry stirs it with a ladle as he waits for it to fully cook. He can see Boris staring at him from the corner of his eye, waiting for his meal.

Henry grabs a bowl and pours some soup into it using the ladle. He sets the bowl in front of the wolf and says, "Here you go, buddy."

Boris, delighted that he has something to eat, brings out a toolbox and places it on the table. Henry opens it and finds the lever inside. He takes it to the door and puts it in its spot. Then he pulls it and the door opens. Boris gets out of his chair and walks up to him.

 _'Did he even eat the soup?'_  Henry asked himself.  _'Never mind that, now. We need to leave.'_

"Come on, Boris," he said, leading the way. They come across a dark hallway and find a lantern flashlight on a workbench. He turns it on, granting some light to the pitch black darkness in front of them.

Both he and Boris stop when they hear a noise coming from above. Henry looks back at the wolf and asks, "Did you hear that? So did I."

They keep walking through the darkness, the flashlight their only source of light. They come across a dead end with light and a door that's firmly closed, no use in trying to budge those heavy doors open.

"I don't see any other way through, Boris. What about you?" He asked. Boris points to the flashlight and Henry hands it over. The wolf takes off the grille of the vent next to the door and crawls inside.

 _'Smart wolf.'_  Henry remarked as the door creaks open. He walks through, not seeing Boris anywhere. He discovers a whole new room that he's never seen that says Heavenly Toys.

"I don't remember any of this..." He says as he looks at the giant stuffed toys of Bendy and Boris. He climbs up one of the two sets of stairs and finds himself in an abandoned toy storage room. There were shelves filled with Alice Angel and Boris dolls, cobwebs and dust covering everything. All in all, they were still in pristine condition but the shelves happened to be blocking the door behind them.

'There's always something blocking the door.' He thought as he starts searching for a switch. He finds one on the wall next to the one of the stairs and pulls it. Then he goes back and sees that there are little toys clogging the belt wheels. He removes them and the wheels start spinning.

There's another switch nearby the machines so he pulls that. The shelves start to move and leave a space for Henry to squeeze through. He also finds another cassette tape and plays it. It's from a man named Shawn Flynn, someone he doesn't actually know that much about, but judging from what he mentions in the recording, he could be the studio's toy maker.

Henry finds himself in a room dedicated solely to Alice Angel, posters of her hanging on the walls and shelves filled with stuffed toys. The lights turn off and music starts to play. Henry recognizes the song is Alice Angel's. He gets a little unnerved, especially since he doesn't have a weapon to defend himself. A spotlight turns on, centered in the room in front of him. Henry jumps back when a woman appears from out of nowhere.

 _"I'm Alice Angel!"_  She screams, pounding her fists on the glass separating her and Henry. The spotlight turns off, making the room pitch black. Henry stands deathly still, really wishing he had that axe right now.

"I see you there," Alice said, her voice echoing through the darkness. "Come along, now. Let's see if you're worthy to walk with angels."

The lights turn back on and Henry presses forward. He turns the corner on a hallway that he didn't see before and finds himself staring at a sign in the middle of two paths. The sign on the left says 'The Demon" while the sign on the right says "The Angel". 


	4. Fall of the Angel

Henry looks back and forth between the two signs, contemplating on which path to take. He makes a final decision and goes down the Demon path. The room he enters is  _flooded_  with ink, and there's so much of it coming down from the ceiling. There's a chair sitting in the corner with a tape laying on top. He plays it and it's Joey Drew making an inspirational speech about belief.

Henry remembers Joey Drew being like that, inspirational and outgoing. But that was just for the public and the press. When the cameras were off and the doors were shut, he was a very grueling man. Henry wants to stop the tape but something tells him not to, so he leaves it and keeps walking.

He stops when another Bendy cutout surprises him and he looks around the corner for the culprit, thinking it was Sammy again. This time it was Boris, and Henry sighs in relief.

"You scared me to death, Boris! Do you have anything to defend ourselves with?" He asked. Boris nods and hands him a gent pipe. Henry examines it and swings it at the air. "This is good."

They open the door that's behind Boris and enter a very messed up room inside. The floor is covered in ink puddles, shelves are falling apart and covered with cobwebs, and toys are scattered across the floor.

 _'This place is a bit of a fixer-upper.'_  He thought. He and Boris pass through and find a door that has to opened with two switches.

"We're going to have to flip these levers at the same time," Henry said. "You get this one, I'll get the one down here."

He heads down the corridor to find the other lever. As he's walking, something jumps out from a poster and Henry backs up. The thing looks like a more twisted version of one of the members from the Butcher Gang. He recognizes it as Charley.

 _'Oh, what the hell...'_  He thought, gripping his gent pipe tightly and swinging it repeatedly at the creature. He hears the thing cry out and it drops to the floor, probably dead. He sighs and pulls the lever that was next to the poster. He steps over the thing's body as he heads back to the door.

Henry follows Boris through and they descend a set of stairs. There's an elevator located here! The two step inside and the doors close automatically and begins to move. Henry looks at Boris to see if it was him but the wolf shakes his head.

Then Alice's voice comes from above through some speakers. "You're so interesting, so different from the others. I have to say, I'm an instant fan. Looks like you've got a date with an angel! Go to Level Nine, sweetie..."

Henry swallows nervously and holds his gent pipe close as he waits for the elevator to come to a stop. The elevator slows down at Level Nine and the gate opens. Boris steps out after Henry and the two go downstairs and explore. Henry finds a tape and discovers it's from Thomas Connor, one of the repairmen that used to work here. In the recording, Thomas mentions something about the elevators not working, making Henry worry a little. He keeps going, following Boris up more stairs to a big door that's shut.

The doors slowly open and Boris runs inside. Henry runs as well to keep up with the wolf and finds him staring at another dead Boris strapped to a plank. Henry looks around and sees more Boris' and Butcher Gang members' bodies strapped to planks. He can only guess what must be loss or remorse on Boris' stoic face.

 _'Hang in there, buddy...'_  Henry says to himself as he traverses over some wooden planks laid out above a large pond of ink.

"Look around you. It took so many of them to make me so beautiful..." Alice said. "Anything that wasn't perfect was left behind. I had to. She made me do it."

Henry scowls as he carefully makes his way across to the other side. He finds another tape from Susie Campbell when he makes it across, talking about how much of a gentleman Joey Drew is. It sickens him, really. Even more than the body of an Edgar hanging over him from the ceiling.

He heads down the hall and finds Alice and another Charley being tortured to death. He feels himself boiling with anger and his knuckles turn white.

"Now we come to the question..." Alice began. "Do I kill you? Do I tear you apart bit by bit? The choices of the beautiful are so unbearable."

"I wouldn't flatter yourself if I were you." Henry scoffed.

Alice immediately turns her head to look at Henry. She ignores his comment and continues. "Look at this little freak, for example! He came in here with his tainted ink. It could've touched me! It could've pulled me back!"

"He didn't deserve to be killed so you could be pretty, Alice!" Henry yelled.

"You have  _no_  idea what it's like! You weren't born from a dark puddle filled with screaming voices! I was an oozing, pussing, inky blob the first time I was born. The second time, well..." She grins at him. "It made me an angel! I'm so close, sweetie, so close to finishing my perfection!"

"Please stop calling me that," Henry said.

Alice looks down upon him, both literally and figuratively. "I'll spare you for now, Henry dear. Maybe let you ascend to the heavens,  _if_  you do a few small favors for me. Return to the elevator, errand boy!"

She presses a button and a shutter drops down, blocking her from Henry's view. He can hear the Charley clone being tortured again from behind it. Henry grimaces and goes back to the elevator. He's stopped by a gate that drops down in front of him and Alice starts to speak.

"I'll make this simple. Look for valve panels, turn the valve wheels, and bring me their power cores," she said. "Don't make me regret sparing you, sweetie. I can always change my mind."

Henry hears a noise behind him and turns around. He sees a plunger waiting for him so he walks towards it and grabs it.

 _'I don't even want to know where this has been...'_ He grimaced.

Alice starts speaking again, just talking in general, so he ignores most of what she says. But he perks up when she mentions the Ink Demon.  _'That must be what I saw chasing me!'_

"Stay out in the open too long and he will find you," she warned. "If you see him, you'd better hide."

As Henry searches for valve panels, he finds a set of stairs and goes up. On the way, he encounters several ink creatures and bludgeons them with the plunger.

 _'This plunger really isn't suitable for killing ink monsters.'_  He thought as he shakes the black goo off the plunger. He continues up the staircase and reaches a hallway with a door down the end and approaches it. He opens it and the room inside is dimly light, the lights flickering rapidly. On the wall is a message written in ink:  **I don't want to work here anymore.**

 _'Yeah, you and me both...'_  He thought solemnly. He keeps searching and looks through a glass window, spotting a Charley clone limping nearby. He also sees a valve panel on a wall inside.

Henry grips the plunger and opens the door, boldly stepping inside. The Charley clone hears the noise and limps in his direction. Henry brings the plunger up and shoves the suction cup into its face, forcing it onto its back. He keeps it there as it struggles to get out and stomps it to death with his steel-toed boots, the clone shrieking in pain.

_'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'_

He pulls the plunger off the Charley's face and goes over to the valve panels. He turns the wheels just like Alice said and the opens the box, revealing its power core. He uses the plunger to remove it and takes it.

Henry continues upstairs and finds another valve panel, doing the same thing to that one. He sees a flooded hallway and walks through it, ink sloshing around his legs. He freezes when he spots a tall figure with a projector trudge past a window. Upon closer inspection, the figure isn't carrying a projector but the projector is actually it's  _head._

 _'I'm probably going to have to enter the same room he's in...'_ He thought when he saw a door next to the window. Henry opens it and quietly steps inside, making sure that projector creature isn't around. He sees the room goes nowhere and is relieved yet confused.  _'But if that's a dead end, where could he have gone?'_

Henry leaves and goes back to the stairs. He walks up and finds another valve panel. He takes its power core and keeps going upstairs. As Henry opens a door at the top level, he hears Alice speak again.

"Have you met the Ink Demon? The rumors say he hears everything. Every creak in the floor and every footstep you take. I wouldn't run so fast if I were you~"

Henry keeps that in mind as he heads through the door. He sees the last valve panel at the top of another set of stairs and goes to it. He turns the wheels and removes its power core.

"Quite the efficient little errand boy, aren't you?" Alice asked over the speakers. Henry presses the elevator call button and waits for the car to rise. She starts to monologue again when the elevator arrives and Boris is waiting inside. He gets inside and presses the button to go back to Level Nine. The elevator gate closes and they start to move down.

They come to a stop and the gates open. Henry gets out while Boris stays behind and he drops the power cores off in the drop box.

"My machines are hungry. Go find some spare parts!" Alice yelled.

Henry sees a wrench waiting for him and takes it. He goes upstairs, killing several ink creatures on the way. He sees a cover on the wall, takes it off, and removes the gear inside. He finds another one and does the same.

He keeps searching and finds one in the room that he saw the projector creature in. Henry finds the last one by the elevator upstairs.

"That should be enough," Alice said. "Return them to me."

Henry calls the elevator and he and Boris go back down. He looks at the wolf and says, "You know, you should really help out more."

He drops the gears off and Alice tells him his next task.

"Have you seen the swollen ones? They're just full of extra thick ink, it's sickening! And yet I need it to make myself beautiful..." She sighs. "If you're going to catch them, you have to sneak up on them."

He takes the syringe and heads off to finish another task for her.


End file.
